In only two years and a half, MAGA has remarkably achieved many of its goals – easily.
For years, the U.S. clamored for other NATO’s members to increase their defense budgets as the U.S. carried some 62% of the total NATO defense spending. Faced with MAGA’s policy of “America First”, EU has been pushing for strategic autonomy, independent from the U.S. In other words, they are not relying on the American umbrella of security, economic and military, anymore. MAGA has got its wish: no more European piggyback at American expense.

The seemingly erratic declarations or statements insulting to its allies, the exorbitant tariff hike, and the effort to transform the U.S. into a police state have built a wall around it. It is now separated from the world, MAGA can do whatever they have wanted to do to transform the U.S.A. into a dictatorship. With or without a king, MAGA has run the country like a kingdom, treating Congress, let alone Democrats, like a side show.
It has decidedly defeated Woke politics and dreams: no more world influence or pressure on America politics to promote and protect minority groups, no more social ideology according to the world’s wisdom. There is now only one block, a solid block of influencers or deciders in American politics and society: the white block – white extremists or supremacists. The US Supreme Court sees to it that the Voting Rights Act will not hinder the Republicans from increasing their seats in Congress, potentially keeping Congress a long-time if not forever puppet. The Court in Louisiana v. Callais, with a straight face, declares that Louisiana must act COLOR-BLIND, beautifully keeping MAGA’s grip on Louisiana’s electorate.

When President Trump appointed several women to important cabinet positions, it led to the belief that the macho MAGA finally recognized that misogyny was wrong and women would be treated equally by MAGA.

Tulsi Gabbard looked serious in white. Kristi Noem with her rolled-up sleeves, hair flying with every step she took, was an unusual image of the head of a security agency that was supposed to be macho – unusual but still unknown and therefore acceptable. Pam Bondi was (and still is) beautiful, poised, ramrod straight, sharp mind, and sharp tongue, all the attributes of an Amazon woman ready and able to confront chauvinism, giving hope that she would prove to be a formidable contribution to the women’s effort to assert their right to be treated fairly and justly.

Then, things unraveled in unexpected ways – but probably foreseen by MAGA’s strategists.

Ms. Bond stated early and openly that she was ready to release the Epstein files, all of them. She had just reviewed them and obviously was outraged by what she saw and read. There were only two groups of human beings in the files: young litle girls and men, much older and much more powerful men. There was only one game, if it could be called a game: the little girls trapped within the walls (brick, mortar, and other kinds of walls) and the men just did to them whatever and whenever they wanted, sadistic, sordid, base. The action called for was clear for Pam: inform the public then prosecute the wrongdoers.

Then, the AG dragged her feet. She postponed the release, and when she did, she released the files, redacted, selectively, as if her decision were influenced, not by what was right or wrong or women needed to fight back, but by some things or some ones else. If that were the case, everyone could guess the gender of these some ones.
But her responses and attitude at Congressional hearings seemingly supported men’s entrenched belief that did serious damages to the Equal Right Movement: Women do not have equal substance.

Congressional hearings are supposed to be a forum for the witnesses to provide answers or information to Members’ questions. The witnesses do not always answer all the questions, and not answering a Member’s question is not exactly difficult requiring high art. Her predecessors, Merrick Garland and William Barr avoided answering questions they did not want to answer with aplomb. But at her Congressional hearings, she behaved and spoke as if she were in an irate-neighbor-fighting-her-neighbor’s dog-messing-her-lawn. No grace under pressure, even though as a woman she should possess more grace than, say, her boss president Trump.

The second woman cabinet secretary, Kristi Noem was asked by a Congress’ member a simple question if she had sexual relations with Corey Kowandowski. Her response was: “I am shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today.” And “That kind of garbage has been refuted for years, and it is offensive that you have brought that up.” She should have learned from the master. On 60 Minutes, the President stated simply and succinctly, “I am not a pedophile”.

What was missing in her answer was the “I”: It was refuted but “I” did not refute. The Occam Razor answer “No, I did not” would have done perfectly well for her. A listener could not help thinking that her dodging of the question indeed confirmed her extra marital affair.

Such lack of grace under pressure and roundabout talking, as read by their detractors, are signs of psychological weaknesses.

After they were gone, one could argue that MAGA had executed a Machiavellian maneuver to deal the Equal Right Movement a severe blow and bolster the misogynists’ prejudicial and sadistic position that the right place for women would be at home, in the kitchen, and in bed.

But their best and most striking achievement is to show how vulnerable and weak Democracy is and how to subvert it without having to fire a shot or even to violate the law.

JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This Article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

    The Anti-weaponization Fund comes at the right time. It is worth spending $1.8 billion to divert the focus from the Iran War, the Economy, the high consumer price and interest rate. The diversion of heat is worth the price of such a tiny sum.

    The president keeps contradicting himself, “flip flopping”, etc. He can do it because he has real power. He does it possibly strategically: he confuses everybody while letting his underlings working quietly behind the scenes to achieve MAGA’s goals. With each of his contradicting statements, an answer or reaction coming out from his ennemies may reveal something useful.

    But the Iran War seems to show the weakness of the planning and the execution of the plan.

    Why attacking Iran? The opt repeated reason is to prevent Iran from possessing atomic weapons. The rarely spoken reason is to keep it from becoming a dominant regional power, and probably the main reason because the first reason does not seem solid.

    That region already has had two powerful countries possessing atomic bombs. India has long been Russia’s ally. Pakistan was the country that harbored, housed and fed Osama bin Laden, the most wanted deadly ennemy in the history of the U.S. Would another country along that shore possessing the weapon bother us? Yes, probably a little. The one who is nervous is Israel, with good reasons of course. But that is Israel’s problem. Strategically, we should have stayed on the sideline and let Israel conduct its fight. We would assist our ally but we should not fight its war. So the reason we initiated the Iran War has a lot to do with MAGA’s hubris. They wanted to claim the title of the champion, since Alexander the Great, who defeated Iran and brought it to submission.

    Israel has proved its ability to collect accurate information inside Iran. The fact that it went in and occupied Gaza with relatively acceptable costs reinforced the belief that whenever Israel put its mind to work, the outcome would be postive. It was supposed to have all the suspicious nuclear weapon production facilities in Iran, an almost perfect estimate of the Iranian defense forces. It just needed the destructive power of the U.S.’s arsenal.

    The U.S. could have provided Israel with the weapons and stayed above the fray and played the role of a peace maker. But the Young Turks advising the president disliked the idea that some other country had all the glory, and, considering MAGA’s tendency of holding grudge against its ennemies, beating Iran was irresistble to pay back its occupying the American’s embassy years ago.

    It turned out Iran is not Gaza or even Lebanon. It has a land mass larger than France, Spain, England, and Germany combined, a population of 92 millions, and a history of fighting ennemies of all tribes since ancient times. As the U.S. and Israel have threatened to bomb them for years, the regime would have been too busy drinking and partying, things they don’t do, to not prepare for such reality.

    Now we are in difficulty. Not that we could not destroy Iran with bombs, atomic if someone in the government liked the idea. The thing is we must come out on top without damaging the prestige and credibility of the nation, considering that our credibility, not just backed up by bombs, has been diminished somewhat.

    MAGA has a lot of energy. It has engaged in many battles, at home and abroad. It has achieved many of its goals (I have written an article on the subject). But aside from enriching its allies, politically, socially, and financially, one is hard pressed to find where does it go from there. The immediate problem that people expect MAGA to solve is the Iran War, which has happened so suddenly and unexpectedly like a hurricane in Florida, an Act of God that people are unprepared and still trying to absorb what has happened.

    That is a huge task. The Iranians are tenacious people. Before the war, their society my have been split between the hardliners and the moderates who wanted a better life for their people. When the foreigners decided to bomb their country ruining their cities and homes everywhere, killing their leaders without mercy, it is hard to expect their society not to come together. If anything, the war has hardened their resolve to fight.

    And they are awakened to the Bob Dylan’s Truth: “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

It is all about that old but proven winning doctrine: Power and a will to use it. It’s not about co-existence and diplomacy; that’s for the sissy. Nuances, persuasive arguments, and give and take are what you would do when you had no dominant power. When you do, you get results without bothering about keeping your promises, being consistent, maintaining other people’s trust. After all, if you can get result by kicking the next guy in the balls, why bother with the teachings of old guys philosophers, ethicists, moralists? You can lie, cheat, turn back on your promise, deceive, and do all that and make sense. Why should you care about the criticism that you lack character? That is the modus operandi of a bully in a barrio. They feel omnipotent, their ego caressed. They can exhibit their power and do whatever they want, for some time at least – if they stay in the barrio.

When it is translated into politics, the principle is the same. Character matters when it helps you win. In a game, you obey the rules. If the rules are about character, you lose if you do not have character. Politics in America right now is the same as life in a barrio: power, not character, reigns.

MAGA is a coalition of special interest groups. The white supremacist group who wants to kick out all immigrants and even people who were born in the U.S. but don’t look the “part”. The isolationists who don’t want to have anything to do with anyone or country that is outside of the U.S. And the old-time millionaires/billionaires who suddenly lost their rich and high society status and feel they are too small a potato when around them new billion fortunes have been created repeatedly by “strangers” who came from abroad or are dropouts from colleges. They have waited for years even decades to inherit their money from their parents and here a boy of 24 years old is paid $250 MILLION to do research on AI. Look at the length of their yachts, and their residences, not a miserable mansion on Fifth Avenue, but private islands!

They came together to find an answer to the question of how to reverse the situation. Simple answer: power. How to get power? Washington is where, to paraphrase a bank robber, the power is. I have discussed the question of how to get power in a previous article. Briefly, it is, as AI may have advised MAGA, racism stupid.

Now that MAGA’s got power. What have they been using it for? To consolidate and maintain power, and to benefit members of the MAGA coalition even if the benefiting seems to be outright corruption. But to MAGA, that is true service to the base, meaning each member must help the others to make the most out of the system.

A serious weakness in any society, or even family, is boredom. In a democratic one, if the citizens get bored, they just run naked in the street. But in a dictatorship, they revolt. MAGA can’t let its base get bored. Actions are required and it has won small skirmishes such as slapping the name of their leader on an institution bearing the name of a revered Democrat, or demolishing half of a building symbolizing the Democratic America. They are the tests. Which force is more powerful than the American citizenry? But it bows and submits easily to MAGA’s whimsical actions without objection. Power can be measured by how much the one holding power can get away with doing whimsical, ugly, even unethical or illegal acts without consequences.

But those are relatively insignificant. MAGA must have bigger plans – not just to impress the base. The bigger a plan, the more power it gets accumulated. How about lifting a foreign leader out of his bed in the middle of the night and sending him to prison in our country? What a fantasy! But with the U.S.’s huge intelligence and commando ability supported by AI,  it was achievable. And indeed, it was triumphantly achieved.

Such achievement causes giddiness in MAGA. Such giddiness with power may lead to catastrophe not just for MAGA but for the country. The war with Iran is the case in point.

We understand the Israelis’ deep fear of the existential threat as their country is situated in the middle of an ocean of Muslim hostility. We could have provided them, as our allies, means to fight their enemies and they would have been able to do so on their own. If Iran was their next target, they could have sent bombs to Iran as accurately as our own armed forces. And if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, as it has, here come the white knight United of America sailing up the Strait on the Star-spangled Banner flying USS Abraham Lincoln to mediate and maintain the peace. The Iranians would have been too happy to welcome us.

But out of hunger for power and showing off its power, MAGA wanted to take credit for clobbering the Iranians just like it wanted to take credit for the Gaza operation. The outcome is disastrous: Iranian hatred for America has gone deeper and the U.S. has lost the role of a powerful arbiter. It is now a party to the conflict and must commit not just weapons but possibly manpower betraying its campaign promise of no more war involving our country. It has found itself in an awkward position of asking for help from its allies whom MAGA disparaged only a few months ago.

The other problem is how to disengage from the war without losing the country’s honor and credit. Iran and its citizen are not just a few individuals opposing its government from Beverly Hills. It is a country fighting invaders since the time of Alexander the Great. The deliberate killing of thousands of members of their leadership has certainly caused fear in the Iranians but also reinforced their suspicion and hatred for foreign intervention. One wonders if MAGA has taken into consideration the tradition, pride, and deep-rooted resistance from such people when it decided to start the war. The fact that it continues bombing and giving then postponing deadlines for Iran to come to the negotiating table, like coaxing your youngest child in the morning to go to school, seems to indicate that it did not. If it did, it did not give it sufficient thought on the ramifications of an open conflict with such a country.

Such confused conduct in the war and in dealing with other countries poses real danger to the stability of the world and security of our own country.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                            (This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

It is taking shape. Well, it has been shaped for quite some time when Condi Rice asked what was the point of having power and not using it? Now, many crucial developments converge and make the use of power more effective and easier, the advance of AI being one of them.

So, the American ideal of Government of the People, by the People, and for the People is not going to be the foundation of the new world order but the Wrestling Mania or the spaghetti cowboy culture (go ahead, make my day) will be. I told you not to try to defend your country by enriching uranium, but you don’t listen. Whack!!! I told you not to get involved in narcotic trade. Whack!!!

The taking of the Maduros and the bombings of Iran are the policy of the new world order. It is not even a carrot and stick policy, because there are no carrots. Or to be exact, we Americans clobber you on your head and then we get the carrots. We bomb you and we will keep all the money you have deposited in overseas banks. We arrest and imprison you and will take your oil.

We Americans are human too. Leaders of other countries are not American, and our blood does not spill. We have a lot of other urgent problems such as a leaking water heater to be concerned about. Overseas problems are not our concern because we have our government to deal with them.

But we should be concerned and should assist our government in thinking correctly. Even if supported by AI, this bullying tactic may turn out to be short-sighted and imbalanced, and the consequences could be chaotic and unpredictable. The Romans fell because they went to wars trying to dominate other countries.

We may overestimate our ability to produce weapons and pay for them. In September 2025, the Defense Department (or Department of War) spent $93.4 BILLION. In only two days, we spent $5.6 billion to bomb Iran. And we have spent or will have to spend billions of dollars to provide defensive weapons to other countries in the region including Israel, which is right now asking for more weapons.

Of course, our economy can do magic again. After each and every war, we came out richer. The Homeland Security Department’s $200,000,000 expense on an ad campaign featuring former secretary Kristi Noem was chump changes. But as often said, money (as well as weapons) does not always solve a problem, especially when the problem is the survival of a country of 100 million people, which has one of the oldest cultures or civilization lasting thousands of years.

Americans have been welcomed, liked, and respected everywhere we have visited. We are not used to being disliked or disrespected and so we may not be prepared to deal with a world where disrespect, dislike, and suspicion are working against us. We may isolate ourselves in the cocoon surrounded by the oceans, just like the billionaires fortifying themselves within the borders of the Florida peninsular. The universe has always been expanding. Isolating ourselves makes us smaller and the obvious consequences are that we may miss a lot of wonders and magics offered by the larger world.

That also goes against our current political philosophy that strong we win, weak we lose. The larger world may get stronger.

JOHN P LE PHONG                                                                                          (This article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

The Politics of Fear is the flip side of the Politics of Strength. An autocratic or dictatorial regime can’t exist without a tool to intimidate and sow terror.

In the 15^th Century, when the Ottomans tried to invade Wallachia, the prince of Wallachia, Vlad III, terrified them with his tactic of impaling his enemies and displaying them in public for their comrades to see. Some German records claimed he ordered the impalement of between 20,000 to 80,000 victims displayed in the “Forest of the Impaled” which stretched for miles.

Impaling was the thrusting of a wooden stake through the lower part of the victim’s body, anus or vagina, pushing it all the way up to the upper part while the victims were still alive, but avoiding the head so that the victim could not die immediately. History gave him the infamous nickname Vlad the Impaler. The much more powerful and larger Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II was horrified, shaken, and forced to withdraw.

Scaring the enemies was a common tactic. The Ottomans themselves had already practiced impaling as punishment and a tool of control. The ancient Chinese kings used the no less terrifying “Tứ Mã Phân Thây” or “Death by Tearing The Body of a Victim By Four Horses” (a horse was tied to each limb of the victim) to deal with traitors.

In modern times, impaling was too savage a tactic even for the most cruel individuals, organizations, or groups. Even the German Nazi avoided it and opted for mass gassing and systematic deprivation. But terrifying or intimidating people, was and is still favored by the bullies.

In present days’ politics, terror is practiced in the forms of blackmailing, lawsuits, prosecutions, withholding funding, and threatening retaliation. The politics of fear has warped public opinion, silenced the voice of reason and conscience, lowered the moral level below that of a civilized society, and forced ordinary people to live permanently in fear and forfeit their right to protest against and object to the political acts they consider immoral, unconstitutional, or illegal.

Fear destroys dignity.

The vicious circle – retaliation begets retaliation – will continue forever.

Unlike all other forms of political systems, fear does not have a place in a democratic society. That reason alone is enough for Democracy to be the best system for ordinary people – and the billionaires too if they can get out of their fantasy of being in control of other people’s life – that has ever been created to serve mankind. It is the best reason for ordinary people to fight for Democracy or one day, sooner or later, they will wake up by a terrifying knock on the door or be stopped in the street while walking home and never again seeing their loved ones.

People who think that they are exempt from terror in a dictatorship are seriously mistaken, because exemption is always temporary and terror, if it can be used against one person or one group will be used against all.

Remember Lavrentiy Beria, the Executioner? For years, he was the terror of the Soviet Union’s communist society including the elites under Stalin, carrying out mass arrests, interrogations, and executions. When Stalin died, he was generally thought to be the next dictator of the Soviet Union. But terror turned around to visit him and he himself was executed in 1953.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                      (This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook)

Since animals appeared on this earth, “the strong dominate the weak and the weak submit” has been the natural law until this day. It had also been the law for humans with probably a brief interruption when Thomas Jefferson issued the Declaration of Independence, which was probably the first written document declaring that all men were equal, seemingly asserting that that law was invalid: there was no divine right of kings. The Declaration and the Constitution formed the foundation of the American Democracy – in fact the foundation of many countries’ political systems – which has enabled ordinary people a say in governing their own life.

Democracy has been a political system to address the imbalance of power between the strong, the wealthy and the controllers of police power, and the ordinary people. The mass with its numbers makes up for the lack of energy due to a lack of wealth and police power. Still, such balance of power has always been in the realm of the same law, and Democracy is still trying to find a better means to enhance and protect the balance.

More than 300 years of thriving Democracy in America, and in some other places, may turn out to be a lull in the grip of the SDWS law.

Democracy was a counterforce against the law. The power of the kings was overwhelming and the populace, scattered around, did not have much. But when they came together, in the American 1776 Revolution and the French 1789 Revolution, the energy was strong enough to subvert the power of the kings and their cohorts, the privileged, and the wealthy. Democracy was a means to make ordinary people’s life safer and better.

In the Twenty First Century, immense energy, in the form of wealth and money, accumulated lopsidedly, so hugely and so fast with the wealthy and privileged getting the most of it. The balance of power is now tilted decidedly toward them, and the multitude is losing out. The law takes hold again and is enforced relentlessly and brutally. Society is again controlled and dictated by the wealthy, and the mass is again obedient servants.

That is not the only major problem for Democracy.

The backbone of Democracy, the middle class, does not seem to be worried. They say to themselves, if I am paid millions of dollars to say in writing or on broadcast media things the strong want me to say, why should I act au contraire? What does Democracy mean to me? Why do I care? When I was scratching the earth in the winter to make ends meet and the strong were frolicking in the snow on a Swiss mountain with their fur coats on, I am not idealistic, mind you, but Democracy made a lot of sense. If my job required support in terms of influence and financially, why should I betray a guy with tons of money who knocks on my door? When my stock value keeps increasing thanks to the billionaires keeping the stock market, artificial or not, at an all-time high, why should I not listen to them? What can Democracy do for me to offset the benefits the billionaires bestow on me? I, a member of the middle class, have two or three cars in the garage, my children in college, the bills paid and money left enough for a vacation or two a year, if Democracy is wounded, it is too abstract for me to be concerned. What if the strong get abusive down the line? I don’t feel like being threatened and don’t want to sacrifice my well-to-do status quo by going against the strong in anticipation of their potential abusive behavior.

What if the American Middle Class does not consider Democracy an ideal anymore because the purposes it is supposed to serve, providing a good life, safeguarding liberty with acceptable exceptions, and creating opportunities for the people to pursue happiness, are already here? What else can Democracy offer so enticing that the American Middle Class will sacrifice their status quo and fight to protect it? A political framework to prevent bullying and abuses? What if the powerful and their AIs create a world where the bullied and abused would be somebody else at somewhere else?

The MAGA U.S.A. is now run, seemingly, like a small town with a chief of police supposedly overseen by the town’s council.  The chief runs rough shots at real or perceived criminals or law violators all over town. The town’s council has so far let the chief have free rein, assuming the town “U.S.A.” has a council. He is so free to act that he does not feel obliged to give a reason or an explanation for his acts.

The most alarming aspect of the current state of American Democracy is the complete silence of the council. It did not do anything even when one of its members, a U.S. senator, was publicly tackled down on the concrete surface of the street for daring to ask one of the chief’s underlings a question. Even if the town agreed to the policy of cleaning up the town’s streets, rectifying the immigration problem, etc., the conduct of the police in carrying out the policies left much to be desired, cruel, rough, and unnecessary, the expected behavior of the bullying strong. The council said nothing.

The cruelty, roughness, and soldiers with combat gears appearing in cities across the nation are probably not unintentionally incompetent but calculated. Some fear impressed on the mind of the populace could be a good thing that pre-empt any attempt to object or protest. After more than 300 years of staying in the background honing their skills and let ordinary people run American politics, the strong, probably with the help of the best AIs money can buy, not only know how to seize power, but more importantly how to keep power – for good. Shouldn’t Democracy seek an alliance with non-MAGA billionaires with their AIs hopefully as effective as the ones possibly being used by those going against Democracy?

Many have criticized Professor Francis Fukuyama’s thesis and asked: Is Democracy really the end of history?

America is seemingly asking: Is Democracy at its end?

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                      (This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

Wishing you a better new year!

China was in a civil war between the Nationalists, supported by the U.S., and the Communists, supported by the Soviet Union. The U.S., with the fervent push from many powerful segments of American society, particularly the religious groups, sent billions of dollars to the Nationalists. Sometime before 1949, the U.S. had decided to abandon the Nationalist China.

In 1975, the U.S., again, left South Viet Nam in the lurk leading to the spectacular evacuation of the American forces and the Vietnamese who chose to leave Viet Nam. The South Vietnamese were bitter. The former Minister of Economic Development and Planning of the last South Vietnamese Government and a close advisor of the late Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, Professor Nguyen Tien Hung wrote a series of books about the experience.

After reading “Khi Đồng Minh Tháo Chạy” (When An Ally Ran Away) his most critical book on the American withdrawal from Việt Nam, I wrote an article pointing out that, besides the fact that there was not a formal alliance treaty between the two countries, the Vietnamese leadership had misunderstood the concept of Alliance. Even a formal treaty such as the France-Czechoslovakia Treaty of Alliance and Friendship was broken by France just before WWII.

Alliance does not mean a suicide pack, we fall you fall with us, and if we die, we expect you to die too. Such fictional Kungfu romantic thinking damaged the Vietnamese American Alliance. The Americans had reached a point where they realized that the war effort of such an alliance was one-sided, that the Vietnamese did not try or did not try hard enough, and for their own national security, they had to get out.

The Ukrainians have fought valiantly against a strange nation, which has continued living in its medieval dream of taking the earth for itself. If the Ukrainians lost, the party that should be blamed would be the European Union.

Since the end of WWII, Europe and now EU has not conducted itself as an ally of the U.S. but a vassal pledging unwavering support to the U.S. in exchange for its protection, which they are now discovering is optional. It has lived next to Russia, a country with a long history of aggressiveness and land-grabbing insatiability. While the world has used the computer’s power to improve the lives of its citizens, Putin’s Russia uses it to hack everybody. Other countries of the world have tried to improve the lives of their citizens by making use of the land within their national borders, Russia has sent its people to die in the hundreds of thousands so that it can take a few square miles of land from ANOTHER country while it has 6.6 MILLION square miles of undeveloped land inside its borders that could have provided immense opportunity for the deceased young Russians to produce wealth for themselves and for others.

The Europeans was probably infected with the South Vietnamese’s “alliance” virus that lures them into the state of mind of a pacifist: Let the American cowboys deal with the ugly Russians. With the American nuclear umbrella over Europe, they have focused resources on making thousands of Birkin bags selling for a million dollars apiece. Voila! Our GDP is catching up with yours, America. In fact, the European Union’s GDP has roughly been in parity with the U.S.’s GDP, especially its Purchase Power Parity adjusted for cost of living. But it has no military power strong enough to put the perennial aggressor on its east border on notice.

A cowboy does not fight for free. America knew that but was so polite as to say it out loud. Until Donald J. Trump and MAGA, who are the real cowboys, came into power. They did not know why America could not say it out loud and why America kept sacrificing its young people and spending its coffer to provide security and safety for others so that they could pursue the folly of spending billions of dollars making little bags and little bottles of perfume instead of manufacturing weapons.

EU members should provide security for themselves including other nations, which if under threat would affect its own security such as Ukraine. The U.S.A. is no longer an America of yesteryears. Then, it would send an airplane abroad to pick up a patient ravaged by kidney disease, transported them to the U.S. for treatment – for free, or send military personnel out to locate the children who were separated from their parents. The present-day America would pick up a seriously ill patient from an American hospital whom they deem not a legal American and send them abroad. Present-day America would not mind separating children from their parents.

Time has changed, but Russian nature has not. Today Ukraine could cede 25% of its land to buy off Russian aggression. Then, there would be little doubt that Russia would look to its other former satellite countries such as Poland, to invade five or ten years from now. The Domino Doctrine is as valid in Europe as in the Western Hemisphere or the Pacific Basin.

The U.S. has made it very clear: It won’t defend Ukraine. It seems the European Union has only two choices: Live on borrowed time long enough to learn how to speak and write Russian or stand up and fight to preserve its integrity, culture, tradition, and way of life. Its GDP is 10 times that of Russia and its population is three times as big. If it let Ukraine fail to protect its territory, it wouldn’t just be a mistake but a sin.

The U.S. has decided to leave Europe because it has enough worry in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific Basin. The drug trade collects hundreds of billions of dollars a year that translates into huge energy, and huge damages if the bad guys start getting ideas and use their financial resources to cause troubles.

In the Pacific theater, with time, if nothing done, Taiwan would inexorably drift toward mainland China. If that were the case, don’t expect Japan, Korea, and many other countries on the Pacific Rim to remain allies of the U.S.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                              (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X).

Marjorie Taylor Greene was born and raised in Milledgeville, once the capital of Georgia with public squares built to imitate Washington, D.C. It is rich in culture and arts and filled with historic architecture and landmarks. It is also a college town with the ethnic makeup of 48% White and 43% Black, a good ground for Progressivism. She graduated from the University of Georgia with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

With such a background, MTG could have been a Progressive. Instead, she has become an ultra-conservative firebrand, making outlandish statements, many of them seem contrived, intended to catch attention or get credentials. She succeeded hugely in catching the attention of MAGA, and became a political star in the ultra-conservative movement. She got plenty of chances to sit at the table with MAGA big shots.

Some time in 2023 or 2024, she started going against MAGA and the president himself, saying that she never owed him anything. Then, she resigned from Congress in November 2025.

Many speculate that she positions herself to run for the U.S. Senate.

Probably.

But the fact is clear: she breaks with MAGA and Donald J. Trump. For such a colorful and energetic character as Ms. Greene, any direction she plunges ahead is a possibility. And there is one possibility worth consideration, a hypothetical one.

In one of those chances that she was sitting at a table with MAGA’s big shots, they talked past her to one another as if she was not there. Not once, they included her in the conversation. Those pretentious, obnoxious, chauvinistic men just ignored her. She was a member of Congress, but they did not consider her as a member of their club, which had been an exclusive one for white men only. She was one of, and among, important people in the room but felt alone.

And her mind wandered.

These men created a religion named after Him, which was based exclusively on His teachings; they had relied on His wisdom and been guided by Him through every step in their lives. At dinner time, they and their families, commanded by them, solemnly and humbly said thanks to Him before eating. But for more than two millennia, they had steadfastly and at times violently refused to admit His people into their club, why was she so naïve to think that they would admit her into theirs?

Suddenly she realized that she was a woman.

Biologically and anatomically, half of His people were more similar to them than she was. She was way different. She was a woman that means fetch me a beer. The difference was drastic. Wasn’t difference the basis and reason of their discrimination?

She had learned a lesson, or rather a truth. She decided to resign from Congress to show her independence and determination. Running for the Senate, or the Georgia governorship, or even a street corner groceries store, she would not beg them for help. If they did want to help, it would have to be on her own terms. She declared she owed the president nothing. That went without saying that she owed MAGA nothing. She would fight to prove her own worth. She would fight to show that she was an equal of men whether they accepted her or not.

And whether she realized it or not, MTG had become a feminist.

Gloria Steinem, give her a call immediately.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                (This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook)